The Most Glamorous Gowns At Couture Fashion Week

During a time when the world appears to be crumbling around us, the realm of couture can offer a fantastical respite from reality: an unabashed celebration of fashion’s most intricate techniques, of ornate embellishments and majestic gowns. Here is a sanctuary reserved for the most indulgent sort of artifice, the most storied ateliers, the most monied audiences – and, while the culture it inhabits might evolve, this world retains a peculiar timelessness, its patrons immunised against political or economic downturns, its aesthetic eternally opulent.

That’s not to say that some of the collections this week haven’t been underscored by distinctly modern values – most notably Pierpaolo Piccioli’s remarkable reframing of the couture clientele at Valentino, which starred a diverse cast of models dressed in his spectacular designs. “You always saw white women in the centre and black women on the side… I wanted to put black women in the centre,” he explained of his decision. “I like classic couture, I don’t like modernism in couture. So, in order to change couture, you change the meaning of it and not the codes.” By marrying the most audacious femininity with contemporary values, he gracefully evolved its historical exclusion to reflect a new reality.

Another explicit reflection of couture’s shift was found at Viktor & Rolf, where meme culture was offset against laser-cut layers of tulle: Insta-friendly slogans appliquéd atop overblown gowns (ironically, John Galliano’s Maison Margiela Artisanal collection, presented several hours earlier, contemplated “the excess, the artifice and then the decay” of the digital age). At Givenchy, exquisite engineering was layered atop latex; enormous bows mutated into couture-grade backpacks. “I tried to take the most modern approach possible with everything,” said Clare Waight Keller.

“We are living in a decadent time,” explained Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri to Vogue in a preview. “We have to understand that our world is finished, because we were born in another time of fashion, when the world was more simple… [now] we have to think about fashion in a different way. It’s exciting.” The theme she adopted for her collection perhaps presented the most apt analogy for the season: the circus, both its extravagant aesthetics and its underlying darkness. While these gowns might maintain the same impact as in decades past, the context they exist within has radically shifted and their fairytale splendour now appears politicised. In 2019, even this extreme glamour can adopt a subversive quality.